Our trusty washer and dryer from our sticks house left home recently for the last time. Now the laundry room and the pantry room are empty, cleaned up and ready for new owners! We have buyers for my desktop computer so we know it’ll have a good home. We’ve had zero interest in our wonderful home but we know the future buyer is out there somewhere and they just don’t know it yet!

We haven’t weighed Dora yet and I’m beginning to be afraid she may be as overweight as we are! Having a diesel pusher eases that concern some, but we’ll see how it goes when she finally gets weighed. After seeing how easy the diesel moves this huge motor house, and how easy it was to talk to each other in the front seats while the engine is running in the rear, I can see that the RV salesman who initially made these claims about a diesel pusher was very correct. If he is right about the weight load being higher, he’ll be batting a thousand.

More household items have been priced. We’ve done so much that you’d think we were out of things to get rid of or sell but nooooooooo! Several of these items were sold on Facebook’s Tangipahoa selling site, many more on eBay, and many others are now boxed up in the garage ready for the next garage sale. 2 big bags of trash from Roy’s computer room were sent to the landfill. Most of the “trash” was old outdated computer parts that wouldn’t be useful in any modern computer. Several other computer things were priced for sale and more toys culled and priced for sale. Our next garage sale is planned for February 9th which should help clear out most of the remaining “stuff”.

I finally tackled going through all our family pictures. Made up a huge box of picture for our sons to have if they want them and kept a shoebox filled with pictures to scan for keeping digitally. 40 years of marriage and 60 years of life have produced way too many pictures. Some are priceless and bring tears to my eyes when I go through them all. The ones I scan will be added to the box our oldest son whose name he asked us to remove and Chip will get. This has a long and time-consuming process. Even though the scanning is all that’s left, that in itself takes a long time. It’s a necessary thing to do since we have such limited space and weight is a concern.

We went to work recently after being off for 2-1/2 weeks for our Christmas Break. Over that break we got to spend time in our RV, learn some, have fun and really get to enjoy it. We feel stronger than ever that this was a very wise decision. For anyone considering this lifestyle change, it takes much research, learning, seeing lots of RVs, and reading other people’s experiences in order to be successful. Each step we’ve taken was thought through, prayed about, discussed a lot and when a decision was made, we took that step. Roy and I haven’t always agreed about each step, but after 40 years of marriage we’ve learned how to compromise and it certainly worked well with this process. It really is more of a process you go through than step by step.

Two things we’re deciding on now is our domicile state and mail forwarding service. The first has been researched extensively and we’ve narrowed it down to a few. I created a spreadsheet with all the information gathered from various sources to aid in this decision. Your domicile state is the state you use for voting, motor vehicle registration, jury duty, health insurance, Dora and Boots insurance, inspection stickers, ease of handling some of these things through the mail, whether they require that you live in the state any length of time, and several other things. It may sound straight forward but there are so many things to take in to account that before we change anything we have to be sure the state choose is a good choice. Everyone bases their decisions on their own personal needs. It may seem like we could just choose to keep Louisiana as our domicile state, but Louisiana’s automobile insurance rates are the highest in the country so that ruled it out immediately. If we can choose another state and take advantage of that one thing it is beneficial financially to do so. We were both born and raised in Louisiana so it will always be our home state even if it’s not our domicile state!

Once you’ve decided on the state you want to use based on your personal needs you choose a mail forwarding service. They give you a physical street address to use for all these things since that’s a requirement on most of them. They receive your mail at their address and at either predetermined times or when you ask for it send your mail to you. They offer services such as filtering through the mail, sending your mail electronically, among other services that we’re just learning about. Finding the one that has a good reputation, with the services you want at a price you want to pay will make the final selection complete. We’re not there yet but we’re working on those two decisions now.

One concern I was recently able to lay to rest was our health insurance. We have excellent coverage through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana at work which I’ll be able to continue after we retire. I’ve contacted their office and they said that we’ll be able to use our coverage with them throughout the USA. I verified it through an online search of various cities, large and small, across the US and there are BCBS providers in network in all physician types everywhere I looked.

Another cool thing in the works is that Roy laid out a plan for two sign type things for Dora and Boots. We’re looking for someone to make them now. Dora’s will say Dora and the Explorers with a picture of Dora and will go on the back of the RV. Boots sign will have his name and a picture of Boots on the back of the Dodge Dakota truck that is our toad.

I love seeing new followers sign up for our blog. The comments have been both helpful and enjoyable. Please keep them coming! We now have 15 followers of our blog, so hopefully by the time we get to start our travels we’ll have more and if they see our Dora and Boots signs on the road, they’ll know We’re the Explorers!

Hopefully I will be getting back home in a couple weeks. Carol goes back to the doctor this week. Her FML is up the first week of February. This has been a long 3 months. Think Danny got his Truckers Atlas at Flying J, but probably Pilot has them too. We also joined the Good Sam club. In fact I still get their magazine because we are Life Members. Think you can get the directory on IPhone or IPad. Suppose you’ve figured out by now that Camping World is nice, but a lot of the things they sell are cheaper at Wal-Mart.

Seemed like a lot of RV’ers used Livingston, TX as a home address. Texas has no income tax and that is why a lot of folks used it. Be sure and get the Trailer Life Campground Directory. It helps to know what size campground sites are. Nothing worse than trying to get in a park where the sites are too short! Dan also got a Trucker’s Atlas because it gave heights of overpasses and bridges. Don’t want to take off the roof of the rig either. It’s especially good if you are going to be off the interstate.

We’ve been wondering about hwo to know the heights of overpasses and bridges before you’re upon it. That’s great to know about the Trucker’s Atlas. I’ve seen a couple of campground books and was hoping someone would recommend one so thanks for that also. We are kind of leaning towards Texas for several reasons. It will be out first state we spend a good amount of time in once we get on the road so that would make Texas convenient also. One day when you’re around Wardline Road stop by and check out our Rv. I remember going in yours years ago, that’s the one and only RV I’ve ever been in!